NA competitive LoL player focusing too much in Fortnite

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Published on: 17/10/2018

A few days ago, IWillDominate fired up an interesting discussion in a tweet, concerning the amount of time that a por League of Legends player from North America had spent on Fortnite a week before playoffs.

While it is fully understandable that professional players take breaks in order to avoid burn out, it remains distasteful to find LoL pro-players dedicating so much time on Fortnite, especially during important stages of LoL competitions. This is especially so when considering that Fortnite is one of, if not League of Legend’s biggest threat regarding its declining player base.

Not going to put any specific person on blast but in NA there was a player in playoffs who had 186 matches of fortnite played the WEEK of his playoff match. Makes me sick

While it may be unreasonable to expect all League of Legends professional players to live and breathe LoL exclusively, pros should be expected to dedicate all of their time to LoL in vital periods of competition. This is especially so for high-level competitions such as the NA LCS playoffs, or even the finals of the gauntlet. NA’s mentality is undoubtedly inferior to those of eastern regions where, as Scarra states, may have high burn out rates but are able to cycle players due to their high levels of talent in their pro pool.

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Moving forward

While organisations may have the right to make their players sign contracts that mandates a certain amount of time on League of Legends, especially in solo queue, it will likely result in negative consequences.

This strategy would place unnecessary stress for players and may be ineffective in general as players would have a poor frame of mind, and fail to learn and improve in these times. Instead, organisations should train up better talent in their sister teams, stressing individuals who are fully dedicated to improving and growing as a player. This would increase competitiveness, as existing pros would be forced to compete with younger talent, a widespread practice in eastern regions like Korea and China.

Getting players who are dedicated to the game, and enjoy player solo queue in their time off would be extremely beneficial to NA. Solo queue is the only way for players to improve their mechanics, an area North American players severely lack compared to other regions, even compared to Europe.